Outbound, Detroit
Victoria Commonality, Capellan Confederation
8 July 3134
The Argo proved to be just as impressive as Max had always imagined it. He had, of course, grown up on the stories of the original Pendragon, the mercenary commander who’d claimed the Argo during the Aurigan Civil War in the early 3020s. After the Word of Blake Jihad ended around 3080, detailed schematics of the dropship design were found and a few were built over recent decades. But this was the original.
The Argo was a unique design in that it was something of a hybrid between a dropship and a jumpship. It had three docking collars and could carry its own load of smaller dropships (like the Aurora). It also had a gravdeck, a section that imitated terrestrial gravity by spinning a portion of the hull. The only thing the Argo couldn’t do was interstellar travel. It still needed a jumpship for that.
Among its other features was a large storage bay, which is where Max now found himself, escorted there by Lilly, just as greasy and grimy as she’d been before. Above their heads was a massive gantry system, with several stripped- down BattleMech chassis hanging from it. The whole setup reminded Max of the way laundry was hung at dry cleaners.
“I feel like I owe you an apology.” Max began. “When I came aboard, you introduced yourself, but I forgot to give you my name.”
“No big deal.” Lilly flipped a few switches on a nearby control panel and the gantry rotated the mechs around, only reinforcing the dry cleaner metaphor in Max’s mind. “I knew who you were. Behemoth is my sister after all. There isn’t much that goes on here that I don’t know about.” Lilly turned the machine off, leaving one mech before them. “I believe you’ll find this one of interest.”
Dangling in front of them was the hefty frame of a Centurion BattleMech. Max whistled in awe.
“That’s a CN11. What are you guys doing with one of those?”
“We did raids for Liao. We salvaged it from a Davion patrol we ambushed on Spica. I take it that’s not the model of Centurion you piloted?”
“No, I rode a CN9-A in the Aurigan military.”
“Oh, the classic. Old school.”
“And because of that, I was assigned to a CN9-D5 in my last unit.”
“Well, that’s the nice thing about this machine. You can take your pick of either config and mount it on this one. She’s an OmniMech.”
“Yeah. Why isn’t this in storage and not in your active machines?”
“Beats me. I suppose we were waiting for the right pilot.”
Max let out his breath in mild annoyance. “Destiny again?”
“I heard about your meeting with the Paladin. I heard he laid it on pretty thick.”
“No kidding. I went from casual admirer of Patrick O’Brian to metaphorical successor to him in one fell swoop.”
“Well,” said Lilly, “Don’t let him get to you. You shoot what my sister tells you and don’t get killed and no one will care whose shoes some Republic bigwig thinks you’re wearing. The job’s crazy enough.”
“What do you make of it all?”
Lilly shrugged. “Four months in space doesn’t sound like fun to me. I just wish we could...” She snapped her fingers. “...just be there already.”
“Could be worse. We could make the journey aboard a Union or an Aurora. At least the Argo has all those fancy recreational facilities I’ve heard so much about.”
“So, on that note...” said Lilly with a sly smile. “We’re going to be in zero-gee for a few hours after we dock with the jumpship. Want to try out the pool?”
“I’ve heard of zero-gravity swimming pools but never seen one. Sure.”
“You’ll like it, rookie.”
---
Max changed into a pair of bathers inside the men’s locker room and then floated out into the hallway. The Argo had come to a stop after docking with its jumper and, as Lilly had accurately predicted, they had a few hours of zero-G while final prep was being conducted.
Max peeked through the airlock into the zero-gee pool. Under acceleration gravity or when the grav-deck was turned on, the room would have resembled any other indoor swimming pool; A large basin in the floor for the water and a perimeter where people could get out and relax. Now, without any form of artificial gravity, the water from the basin was floating as large “bubbles.”
“How does the water get back in the pool when we turn gravity on?” Max wondered to himself. He figured there were drains or something that made everything flow nicely back where it was supposed to be once the gravity kicked in.
The door to the women’s locker room slid open and Lilly emerged, wearing a red one-piece. Gone was all the grease and grime. Her hair was wet, so Max still couldn’t quite tell what color it was; Brown or auburn perhaps.
Of course, it wasn’t just her hair he noticed. Despite her petite size, Lily sported a very shapely figure. Her breasts were huge and the red spandex of the swimsuit barely held them in. His eyes widened and he smiled at her.
“You clean up nice.” He said, darting his eyes back to her face and trying to be polite.
She returned the smile, clearly aware of the lust in his eyes. “Nice of you to notice, Max. You ready for a new experience?”
“I never entered a pool that had an airlock before.”
“It keeps the water from getting out into the ship. That would be a bit of a mess.”
“How do you swim in that?”
“So many questions.” she said, opening their side of the airlock and entering. “Just get in here.”
He entered and the lock sealed behind them. The inner door then opened and Lilly gave Max a playful shove into the pool room. He immediately floated right into one of the bubbles of water and became enveloped by it.
Hitting the bubble had the same sort of shock for Max that diving into a normal pool might have had. It took him a half second to get his bearings and he twirled in the water to see where Lilly was going. She launched off the airlock door to enter another bubble nearby. She swam through the bubble and then popped her head out the other side.
Max imitated her, discovering that moving within the bubble of water was not all that different than swimming normally. He popped his head out and took a breath. “Okay, this is different.” he mused as he began to float, body still underwater, upside down.
“It takes a little practice.” Lilly dropped below the surface of her bubble and then launched herself out of it, across intervening air, and into Max’s bubble. She slid up next to him and popped her head out into the air. “It helps if you have some practice with zero-gee.”
“Which you do.”
“Mechs after a battle need fixed whether we’re in orbit, in transit, or attached to a jumper. In fact, there are some tasks easier to do in zero-gee than in gravity. Others can be much more dangerous.” She pointed to a small, but nasty looking, scar on her right shoulder. “Sparks from a torch don’t fall in zero-gee. They float. Get a burn like that and you learn quick how to dodge them.”
Max moved over and brushed his hand across her skin where she pointed. She didn’t mind his touch, but got a sly smile on her face. A smile that grew more devilish as she curled up and then launched her petite form off of his chest with her feet. She went flying off into another bubble, while Max was knocked out of his.
Max found that swimming in the air was much harder than the water. Flapping his arms did little to move him in any direction as floated in the space between the water bubbles. “Okay. This isn’t working. I can’t get leverage.”
Lilly laughed at him. Max frowned. “Okay,” he said, “I’ll admit it. I’m not very skilled in zero-gee. Help!”
Lilly used the water to launch her towards him. As she passed by him, she grabbed his hand and used her momentum to pull him into yet another bubble of water. “Okay, Rookie. I’ve got you.” she said with assurance as they surfaced on the other side.
“You did that on purpose.” Max accused her.
She shrugged. “Call it a test.”
“Show off.” he teased her.
She moved up into his personal space. “If you think this is fun, you should see what else I can do in zero-gee.” she said with another sly smile.
“You’re flirting with me.” Max suddenly realized.
“Of course.”
“Do you do this with all the new recruits?”
“Only the cute ones.” she said. She leaned in and kissed him. “That was the free sample. If you want anymore, it’ll cost you.”
“Cost me what?”
“You’ve got four months in space to figure that out, rookie.”
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